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J. Craig Venter told them that, within a decade, they will find it hard to believe they practiced medicine without knowing the genome of their patient first. (Published Monday, June 8, 2015)

One of the world’s leading experts in biochemistry and genetics told graduating medical students that medicine is changing so rapidly, most of what they had just learned will soon be viewed as “just plain wrong.”

J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., one of the first scientists to map the human genome, addressed 115 graduates of UC San Diego School of Medicine Sunday.

It is the first of several commencements over the next two weekends at the university.

Venter told the graduates this may be the most dynamic period in medicine.

“There's going to be such a major transformation over the next 40 years, that most of what you just learned will be viewed historically as naive, overly simplistic and just plain wrong," Venter said.

He then turned and apologized for that remark to school administrators.

He predicted that, within a decade, these new doctors will find it hard to believe they practiced medicine without knowing the genome of their patient first.

He also said the cost of identifying a patient's genome could drop from its current price tag of $1,000 per genome to a few hundred dollars within 10 years.

Venter earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and a Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California at San Diego.